Falls of Dess revisited

It was a split group this week, with Messrs Sharp and Kilgour going out on Wednesday, and opting to do the Crathes loop again. The rest of us - 8 in all - stuck to Thursday again and took cars out to Potarch and started there.

For Dick and John it was the case of a return trip to Falls of Dess, but this time in much more pleasant weather. Dick was showing off his new bike, which looked to have even out-trumped Les:

We also had yet another debutant - Ken Page had just flown in from his latest jaunt to Iraq, and was all geared up, including this virtual condom that he put on when a spit of rain briefly threatened:

The initial part of the journey from Potarch to Kincardine O'Neil is on the Deeside Way, just south of the North Deeside Road. There are a number of downhill stretches but, nearer Kinker, there's one very short, sharp uphill stretch - so steep, in fact, that only Dick made it all the way up on his (new) bike. Everyone else tried but it was almost impossible to keep your weight on the back wheel to get sufficient drive, when you had to simultaneously lean forward to maintain your balance going up the slope.

There's then a short section on the road/pavement through Kinker before turning right and heading up the hill to re-join the Deeside Way. The next section is a fairly relentless gradual uphill grind, with one fairly steep part, before you freewheel sharply downhill towards the Falls. At the bridge at the bottom, we parked our bikes for the short walk to view the Falls. There was a horse mounting station there which looked like an Olympic podium, which our leading three posed on:

The Falls of Dess were worth the trip:

It's a pretty steep drop down and the path is fenced off, so the team photo had to be taken in the opposite direction:

Les Gray, Ken Page, Rob Pollard, Robin Brodie, John Perry, Scott Hunter, Dick Taylor & Ian Stewart

We walked back to the bridge and then cycled further along the Deeside Way, eventually coming out on the North Deeside Road, near the White Cottage, from where we rode a couple of hundred yards on the main road and then turned down towards the World Horse Welfare at Belwade Farm for our planned tea/coffee and scones break. It's a further 1.5 miles down a fairly narrow, bumpy tarmac road and we stopped after a mile or so to chat to a couple of horse riders that Dick knew. When we started up again, I heard that ominous, rumbling sound coming from my back wheel - I had a flat. Pumps and puncture repair kits were offered but we eventually concluded it would perhaps be best for me to walk down to the coffee shop and phone a taxi from there. Dick (in front in yellow) kindly offered to take my bike:

That's the fine figures of Robin and John - rear views - behind Dick.

The World Horse Welfare centre is an amazingly large place and we had our scones on the decking there:

My taxi duly arrived and I headed off back to Potarch and back in to Aberdeen for a business lunch - but not before there were lots of comments about my more than 30 years old bike. So much so that both Ken and Dick offered me their old bikes! I think I might take them up on this.

My Strava stats show that the journey out was only about 10 kms and the elapsed time was just over an hour and a quarter, but Dick's stats, which obviously included the return journey, showed total distance of 13 miles - http://www.strava.com/activities/152613226

Lots of technology in use now - John came up with this illuminating route map overview: